Who am I

Childhood and adolescence

I've played a bit with a Commodor Vic-20, getting in touch with (Basic) programming at the age of 10, later learned some pascal at school and C helping my big brother with homeworks. Then I stopped using computers, being taken by the sweet romanticity of theatre, poetry, music and civil disobedience.

Sociology

In 1993, at the age of 18 I left my parent's house and payed my first
education tax, to study Social Science. I came out of a technical
high-grade school, and got bored of technical educations. I strongly
belived (and still do) that the education is not worth taken if its
only application is finding a job, so I never tought about becoming
a Social Scientist (most co-students ended up working for costume
TV programs).

The Internet

After a year I've estimated that the taxes were too much for my
finances. I didn't give a single exam, but I've learnt a lot and
had much fun. It is during that year that the computer field came
back knocking on my mind.
I've heard about The Internet before actually seeing it, and that's
probably been a luck. I've heard about its social impact, I've felt
the enthusiasm of a coming revolution, I've read about collective
intelligence, the fragmentation of capitals, the freedom of information,
the time acceleration. I've read suggestive science-fiction
books, most notably Snow Crash.

Internet access was not widespread in my country, it was mostly
possible using bullettin board systems, but I didn't even have a
computer, let alone a modem and money for a BBS account. The faculty
itself did not provide much access. But I recalled about an invitation
I had to go visiting my uncle Rob, as a gift for high-school graduation.
He is my father's brother, living in New Jersey for a long time
and working there as a CAD engineer. His wife is an Italian teacher.
I asked him "do you have Internet access?" he answered "sure!".
He and his family hosted me for a long 6 month period (Thanks!).

USA

My life in NJ has been spent in front of PC and SUN monitors.
I've learnt how to use Windows(TM) in my uncle's house,
surfed the net till feeling overfull of information (a very common
experience), made some Access(TM) databases, learned how to write
HTML, made some pages for relatives and finally got a job in
an Internet Service Provider. There I've met Unix systems and I
realized how friendly could a computers be. The company mainly
realized web pages. I helped with that (HTML tables seemd to be
harldy understood by my co-workers), studied some Java(TM) (alpha
version at times) and Perl, implemented and maintained some perl CGI
applications written in perl (opening a new branch of the company
offers). All the work was done in a Motif(TM) environment, on
Solaris(TM) systems.

Finally I got the real feel of what the internet was, studying the TCP/IP
protocols stack, joining irc networks, remotely talking to friends sitting
in front of a computer back in Italy. I could publish information, I could
communicate in synchronous and asynchronous mode with people all around
the world, I could build services for this world-wide community. But most
amazingly I could do all of this regardless of my physical location.

I begun to exploit such tele-working capabilities doing some works
for people in Italy, met on irc networks. At the end of the 3-months
visitors permission I once again used the Internet to get a job,
writing to the director of the theater I used to work in before leaving
and organizing with him for a short tournee with which I could pay the
round trip and continue with my new digital researches (I was a lights
tech).

Free Software

At the end of the second 3-months permission I had to choose whether to
remain in USA (the company would anticipate the money for the documents)
or to come back in Italy. I counted the money gathered thus far, and
decided to get a laptop computer in order to continue working wherever
I'd eventually decide to stay. It was a used 486DX 100Mhz, with 20MB of RAM.
Searched for a Unix operating system and found Linux on the net. With
the help of many people on irc networks I handled to install it (slackware
floppy disk sets) and configure it for internet access, by modem or LAN,
and provide a GUI (fvwm/X11 - still using that).

That's how I've encountered the Free Software: looking for a Unix OS
for my PC. The Freedom was an add-on. But over the year it became
a very valuable source of information. Working with Free Tools made
me somewhat more free. Whatever tool you use it modifies you, it modifies
your abhits, and the way you think. When you get used to friendly tools
made by people to be useful, and not to be sold you start hating the
packages. All those wraps around things, all the marketing and face
lifts attached to simple things, making them uncomfortable to use
and hard to understand. When you realize that software tools are a
product of the human brain, you hate those ones which do not freely
flow as ideas *should* do, for humanity health. When you understand
that software can be replicated as easily as talking you stop
understanding the point of preventing it's spread.

Back to Italy

In 1996 I've been working for a few Internet services in Rome, but could
not really find any tele-work. On the other hand I enjoyed teaching Internet
to the masses :p, with low-price short courses organized by a group of
people running a Bullettin Board System (AvANa BBS). That's where my
nickname was born.

I tried to drive the BBS guys into the Internet, but could never handle
doing so. Currently, I still think the BBS systems are far more advanced
then many attempts at reproducing that kind of community on the web.
The most similar situations I see are free public or semi-public shells,
but very few BBS communities realized this transition (The FreakNet MediaLab
is an example of successful transition).

NetLab Team

In 1997, I've met Sal and Vic sharing with them many common points of interests.
Sal taught me the C language and a more efficient approach to development
(planning, mainly), and for a long period of time supported my studies
taking care of (shared) incomes. It's during these years that I developed
my SINS videogame and the shell chat system shirc.
I've started working with them on the italian market, forming the
NetLab Team.
As a team we joined
Palomar New Media
on 2000, starting a research and development project about web-based
geographical information systems.

In January 2002 my sweet daughter Laura
has born, after 9 months and a few days of gestation from the beautiful
Diana.
We left the city of Rome and bought an
apartment in the interland.
Diana is an artist, and I'm trying
to convince her to sell some of her creations on the internet.

Recent occupations

Since 2004 I'm collaborating with Refractions Research on the development
and maintainence of their Free Software packages postgis and GEOS.
I'm actively involved in the development of Ming (SWF output library) and Gnash (the GNU Flash Player).